Eva Branco

In the Jan. 28
issue of The Mercury, an op-ed by
Alexander Christie — entitled “Shutdown at the D.C. Corral” — asserted that the
recent partial government closure was necessary to reexamine the issue of
border security. This, among other parts of the article, is categorically
false.

If the shutdown
was meant to heighten the stakes, as Christie suggests — making it clear to
Democrats that the Republicans are unwilling to delay or quibble on this issue —
I would ask why the government is open today. Both political parties, after
over a month of a partially shut down government, have not bent in the
slightest on their respective positions. If missing two weeks of paycheck is a
trivial price to pay, why would the president and Republican leadership cave
entirely to Democrat demands to end the shutdown and still not receive a cent
for the border wall? The shutdown ultimately accomplished nothing and did not
alter the national political situation on border security at all.

Christie goes on
to highlight the hypocrisy of some leaders of the Democratic Party. While it’s
true that Democrats, including Barack Obama, did expand the amount of physical
security on the border, Obama deported more people than either of his preceding
administrations and more than President Trump has so far. If Christie would
contend, as he does in the first paragraph, that immigration enforcement has
been neglected up to this point, I suspect he will be surprised learn of this
fact. And as for why Democrats are offended by the Trump administration, let us
not forget the current administration’s child separation policy. Many children
still have not been returned to their families, and many will likely never see
them again. This is a fundamental difference between today’s immigration
enforcement and that of the past.

The suggestion
that there is no sympathy for border patrol agents is a lie of omission. A
simple Google search will yield acknowledgment after acknowledgement from all
over the Democratic Party that our law enforcement agents have a difficult job
that should be respected. Christie does notice, however, that slow and
inefficient legal immigration results in a more illegal immigration, but
crossing the U.S. border and seeking asylum, which is what the vast majority of
non-visa overstay immigration is classified as, is legal. If the goal of the
Trump administration is to prevent these people from exercising their rights
under international law, the answer is not to build a wall. It’s to hire more
immigration judges to process and deport them faster, much like Obama did.

The final flaw in
the op-ed is a systemic misunderstanding on Christie’s part. This is the result
of a hyper-focus on particular statistics that seem useful in support of his
central narrative. Disregard for wider trends and larger collections of related
issues is why Christie has difficulty understanding why people would support
Democratic policies, or why he argues that the wall is unnecessary or why this
administration in particular should be treated with skepticism and distrust.
The issue is not about the cost of the wall, as Christie makes it out to be.
It’s about the 800,000 workers’ paychecks being withheld as a political tool
and the complete distaste of the process of governance shown by the Republicans
and the president. The shutdown was the direct cause of a singular action on
the part of the president to veto a spending bill and the Republican Party’s
decision to not allow any continuing resolution to come to the floor until the
president gave the go-ahead. Democrats presented over a dozen bills to end the
shutdown, but all were rebuffed by Speaker of the House Mitch McConnell.

In short, the author of “Shutdown at the D.C. Corral” is simply ignorant
of the incredibly complex sociopolitical issues that plague our nation’s
immigration system, willfully ignoring his party’s contribution to that plague
and looking for simple, unrealistic solutions. This is what happens when a
holistic approach to social issues is ignored.